Famously marriage-averse Hugh Grant is getting hitched at 57

The British actor best known for a slew of romantic comedies always had an “unromantic” take on marriage — until now. He’s preparing to marry the mother of three of his children, Anna Eberstein, according to the BBC. It wasn’t announced by a publicist or on social media. Instead, their wedding banns were posted at the Kensington and Chelsea register office, near the couple’s West London home, when they were noticed.

Hugh Grant and Anna Eberstein have made a few red carpet appearances, including one at the 71st British Academy Film Awards on Feb. 18, 2018. (Photo: AP Images)

The star of such films as Bridget Jones’s Diary, About a Boy, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings and a Funeral and Eberstein, a 39-year-old Swedish TV producer, are parents to three children born since 2012. His ex-girlfriend Elizabeth Hurley was the one to break the news about baby No. 3, mentioning in March that they had recently welcomed a new addition.

However, while he and Eberstein have been together, Grant had a second child with on-again, off-again girlfriend Tinglan Hong. He has had five children in total since 2011 — all after he turned 51.

Grant’s love life has been eventful in general. He had a 13-year romance with Hurley, cheating on her in 1995 with a prostitute named Divine Brown. He was arrested, famously addressed it on the Tonight Show, and later called the incident “insane.” (He and Hurley are on good terms, with Grant serving as one of the godfathers of her son.) Another of his famous exes is Jemima Khan.

With Grant’s track record, you never quite know what will happen next, but we didn’t expect marriage. After all, in 2016 he called marriage “unromantic” in an interview with Howard Stern. “Do I think human beings are meant to be in 40-year-long monogamous, faithful relationships? No, no, no,” he said. “Whoever said they were? Only the Bible or something. No one ever said that was a good idea. I think there’s something unromantic about marriage. You’re closing yourself off.”

But maybe his idea of marriage is one with a bit of an open-door policy, because he added, “I can see the lovely aspect if you marry exactly the right person — your best friend and it’s cozy and it’s lovely. But people make so many mistakes. I always admire the French and the Italians, who are very devoted to their marriages. They take them extremely seriously, but it is understood that there might be other visitors at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. You just never boast about [it]. They never say anything, but that’s what keeps marriages together.”

A Golden Globe winner, Grant most recently appeared in the film Paddington 2 and the British show A Very English Scandal. Outside of that, he’s a hands-on dad who is busy with five children under the age of 6, sharing with People magazine recently one of his favorite ways to entertain them: “I think it’s always amusing to put your underpants on your head.”